Free Dead Souls by Michael Laimo

He was laying down on his side, tongue lolling, staring at them inquisitively.
    The family walked about a hundred feet to the center of the backyard. When Benjamin stopped, everyone spread out alongside him and faced the barn, which loomed in the near-distance.
    Benjamin stared at the old, wooden structure, its once trim red surface faded to a shoddy pink, peeling away in unsightly patches. He smiled. My sanctuary. It is…changing…
    And so it appeared. The low-lying eastern sun splayed its golden rays across the entire backyard, capturing the barn beneath its unmarred brilliance. Now the chipped white trim and ramshackle structure appeared to take on a newfound potency, its ugliness beaming heartily in the day's fresh light. Everything around them—the overgrown grass, the wandering weeds, the dandelions—appeared savagely rich and lush, highly aromatic.  
    The morning was very hot and humid, more so than it had been all summer long. Perfect conditions for ritual, Benjamin thought. Beneath his robe, his skin felt clammy, sticking to the hot black fabric in damp patches. Behind the barn, from the woods that ran nearly twenty miles all the way to the outskirts of Skowhegan, tendrils of smoky mist crawled in, low-lying and dense. It seeped around the barn, seizing the entire perimeter like an oncoming tide. It carried with it an acrid odor of burning timber that filled Benjamin's nose instantly.
    "The Lord Jesus Christ has given us a glorious day so that we may commence with Bryan's allegiance to Osiris." The air seemed to absorb Benjamin's words, and it was at this moment he noticed that there were no sounds at all on the farm: no birds chirping, no roosters crowing, none of the penned goats or pigs bleating for their meals. Even Bryan remained silent in his father's arms. All Benjamin could hear was the static rustle of the hot summer wind as it carried through the distant wheat fields.
    Moments passed as Benjamin prepared his mind for ritual. Breaking up the brooding silence, he could hear the metallic clanging of a cowbell. It seemed to come from inside the barn. He stood motionless, and listened. It struck thirteen times, then stopped.
    "The bell has tolled . It is time," he said.
    Without saying a word, Benjamin stepped toward the barn, his feet kicking through patches of crabgrass and dew-soaked dandelion clusters. Strangely, even the sounds of their footsteps were muted, seemingly trapped in the strange vacuum that had siphoned off everything in the surrounding area.
    He reached the door to the barn, which was padlocked. He looked left, and then right, surveying his surroundings. They were familiar, of course…but had taken on an unusually exotic appearance, as though he'd stepped into an old sepia-toned photograph—the vibrant colors of the previous moment had mysteriously vanished, and when he looked overhead, he saw peculiar tan-shaded clouds impregnating the sky.
    Before Benjamin could consider the abrupt change in the atmosphere, a flapping noise overhead fell into the eerie silence. He saw a lone blackbird settling down on the pointed peak of the barn. The bird jigged in its effort to find a solid landing position, then pointed its tiny eyes downward, ruffling its feathers as if to acknowledge Benjamin's presence, and the event about to take place.
    "Osiris's messenger is here," Benjamin uttered, feeling strangely intimidated. It has delivered the perfect setting for the spirit's arrival , he speculated as something heavy turned over in his midsection. The bird cawed, and in this instant some of its feathers fell out into the gutter, leaving behind a bare patch of pink hide on its body. The bird poked its beak deep into the raw skin and resurfaced with a fat, buzzing horsefly.
    The ground mist continued to spill out from the woods. It made its way across the high grass in the backyard—rising as high as their knees—all the way to the rear of the house. Benjamin took a step